Call for Contributors or Co-Producers for Emerging Artist Development

This paid opportunity invites 3-4 individuals or collectives to support a four-month long young artist development programme launching in May 2024, intended to support emerging artists finding barriers to entering creative careers, as well as new arts graduates struggling to find early career opportunities. Delivered through a combination of participant-led peer-learning workshops and three mentorship or practice development sessions, this project will offer participants reflexive mentorship and networking opportunities with artists and gallery professionals in London. It will culminate with participants publicly sharing a new body of work as an exhibition, event/performance, or workshop held within or nearby Newham, Dagenham, Barking, or Croydon between, September and November 2024.

What will be asked of guest contributors/facilitators?

If you are interested in participating as a facilitator, we will work collaboratively to co-develop a workshop, with as much or as little design direction as you like. It’s important that this project also supports your own research, art or education practice, and that the experience is a fulfilling one for you.

Each workshop will be expected to run 60-120 minutes, not including set-up.

Key learning and skills that workshops might provide participants could be:

- Project/exhibition/concept development
- Identifying and realizing practice goals
- Failure, working alongside and with it
- Working through creative blocks and creative burnout
- Writing successful grant, residency, and open-call applications
- Networking

About the Curator:

As a curator and producer, my experience lies in collaborative projects that promote empowerment and access to participatory creativity and learning. Prior to postgraduate study in Curating at UWE Bristol, my academic background lay in postcolonial studies and radical pedagogies. After developing my pedagogical practice in these fields through several years working as a teacher in Canada, I relocated to Amsterdam, where I spent a year researching and producing large-scale community-embedded street art projects, accompanied by engagement and education programming at Street Art Museum Amsterdam. I focused research and curatorial work through my MA on collaborative and participatory practices including workshop design with high-profile international artists and a long-term young artist development programme, in addition to developing and delivering other events- and exhibitions-based programming. Working extensively with both professional artists and young emerging artists throughout my MA, I bring a keen understanding of difficulties facing new artists, and how to create interactions that will help drive their creative careers forward.